Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones are co-authors of How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms. Chris is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and the New York Times’s chief data scientist and Matt is a professor of history at Columbia. Together, they taught a course called “Data: Past, Present, and Future," and their book is an extension thereof. We discuss the history of how data is made; the relationship between data and truth; and the unstable three-player game between corporate, state, and people power. We are currently in an unstable and unpredictable three-player game between state power, corporate power, and people power. In fact, we have a lot of collective influence via the way we construct norms. Our constant human activity is the grist of the mill for machine learning. Corporations do not have all the power. Still, the mix between advertising and data has created a lot of the most pressing concerns in the world’s algorithmically mediated reality.Follow Chris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/chrishwigginsFollow Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/nescioquidFollow Mila on Twitter: https://twitter.com/milaatmosAdditional InformationThe Democracy Group listener surveyFuture Hindsight PodcastMore shows from The Democracy Group Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.